


Regicide

by Lizardlicks



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Canon-Typical Violence, Death, Illustrated, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-28 02:53:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/669423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardlicks/pseuds/Lizardlicks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"... but the followers had already made their preparations in the shadows, and when the Second Signless finally came he would have a lusus to raise him and a sign to his name."</p>
<p>War is coming to Alternia.  After centuries in the dark places and shadows, those who have kept the knowledge of the Sufferer and the Summoner are raising their banners anew, called again by crimson blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tags will be added as situations, characters and ships appear to avoid spoilers, so mind the changes each chapter update!

**Eridan: Wake Up**  
  
You awake disoriented.  Something pulled you out of a dead sleep, and now you’re having trouble orienting yourself.  The sopor is warm and relaxing, beckoning you to ignore this little blip and to sink back into its welcoming embrace, but there is something niggling the back of your mind, and you can’t ignore it.  You’re just going to be waking up again in a half hour if you don’t sort it out anyway.  Sighing, you grip  the edge of your recuperacoon and pull yourself out with a wet slorp.  You want a shower first but then you are going to find what ever woke you up and shoot it between the eyes. Repeatedly.  
  
You collect some fresh clothes and a towel from your wardrobifier before heading for your ablution block.  On your way out of your room, you pause by your lusus’ usual place by the door to offer him a quick pat on the head…  except the seahorse isn’t there. You glance around the room to make sure the creature hasn’t just eluded you by being contrary this evening, but he’s most certainly not in the room at all.  The back of your neck prickles, and you reach for the harpoon gun you keep resting against the wall beside your ‘coon.  Now you know something is _definitely_ off.    
  
No ablutions tonight until after you’ve found your guardian alive and well and punched a few holes in something ala your guns, possibly said lusus if he’s just being disruptive.  You drop the clothes and towel off the excess slime instead, then fish your pants out of the new pile you created and shimmy them on.  You’re reaching for your shirt when you hear something scraping faintly at your door.  The lock jiggles just the tiniest bit.  Someone is trying to pick it.  
  
Someone is trying to _rob_ you!  Your blood boils, and you feel your cheeks heat in indignant anger.   You have a rather short list of trolls with those particular skill sets who’d want to gloat about pulling one over on the famous Orphaner Dualscar.  It consists of precisely one spiderbitch, and you’re tired of playing her head games.  
  
It’s time to teach them a painful lesson.  Forgetting the shirt, you snatch your glasses from their place in your drawer and plop them on your face before ducking behind your recuperacoon and propping your elbows up on its rim to line up your shot.  Their wanting stealth over force puts you at an advantage.  It’s obvious they aren’t expecting you to be awake yet and when they finally jimmy the lock open it becomes apparent why.  Odd red light spills softly through the door.  It’s being filtered by the window tinting on the hallway portholes but that is most definitely sunlight, not the proper green light of the moon that will be rising in a few hours yet.  Fuck, how early is it?  
  
What’s more of a shock is that the troll that pokes their head cautiously through the door isn’t your ex-kismesis.  The intruder is a scrawny scrap of a squeakbeast-eyed thing, and it ducks in, timid and low, shuffling with careful slowness, trying to keep his movements muffled.  You don’t have any honest way to tell because his grey, nondescript clothes bare no colors or symbols, but you’d stake a fair wager that the little snot is lowblooded.  He’s most certainly a land dweller; there’s not a fin to be seen on his face.  You’re almost impressed enough with the size of the fondleglobes he must have to break into a seadweller’s hive to forget to be livid.  Almost.  
  
Your crosshairs swing up, moving from a low, non-lethal but almost certainly crippling leg shot to settle on his temple.  You pull the trigger and savor the muffled sound the firing mechanism makes and the the soft sting of recoil as he crumples to the floor at nearly the same instant.  The shot is clean and yeah, you guessed it, the blood leaking around the shaft of the harpoon is dirty yellow.  
  
What you don’t expect is the shriek of outrage from the hall as a second troll comes crashing through the door with a hammer raised over his shoulder.  You have to scramble over your ‘coon and catch another harpoon to reload your weapon, but that puts you closer in range to his swing, and he’s already leaping his fallen companion.  You duck and tumble into a roll, trying to load the gun as you go and put enough space between you to aim your shot.  As you come out of the roll and on to your knees he’s closed the gap but not fast enough to stop you from pulling the trigger again.  The projectile sinks through his neck, and he falters then goes down in a sprawl, stopping at your feet.  
  
Your blood is pounding in your ears, and your breath comes in ragged gasps.  You fall against the wall at your back and pause to steady yourself before kicking savagely at the second troll’s head.  His blood, barely dark enough to be considered green, is forming a pool beneath your bare feet, and you’re sure it’s going to stain something horrible. You’re going to have to have these floors redone.

As you rest, the stillness rushes back in and with it carries disturbing sounds.  There are the shuffle-scrape-thumps of multiple sets of feet moving about from somewhere on the levels below and hushed voices drift up from the hall.  
  
Shit.   _Shit!_  Fucking Gl’bgolyb’s slimy waste sphincter, there’s more of them!  
  
This has gone from errant break in to premeditated theft.  Oh, you so did not feel like dealing with _this_ first thing in the evening.  
  
You weigh your options.  It’s likely they heard the greenblood’s cries, but they aren’t charging to his aid.  They’re moving closer from what you can tell, but they’re doing so cautiously.  They know they have a fully conscious and entirely dangerous seadweller to contend with now, and they aren’t suicidal enough to rush an assault.  You wonder if you can intimidate them down and decide to keep that option on the back burner for the moment.  
  
You don’t know how many there are but certainly more of them than there are of you, so they have a numbers advantage.  Your lusus would even the odds but you still don’t know where he is.  If something’s happened to him you’ll…  
  
Fuck, you can’t think about that right now, you need to keep focused on making a plan.  
  
You’ve got the advantage of knowing your terrain.  Ahab’s Crosshairs are locked in the vault but you can map out an almost direct path to it in your head that should remain relatively undiscovered and has plenty of extra weapon caches along the route.  You mentally plot out two more just to be on the safe side.  Your harpoon gun is quieter than most of your other weapons, which will help with stealth, but it’s limited to one shot before needing a reload, and the ammo is bulky to carry so you need to keep this as an infiltration mission until you’ve secured more fire power and a better estimation of your enemy.  
  
There’s the creak of that second step leading up here from the floor below that betrays the next approaching wave and it signals you to move, now, and scheme more along the way.  You stand and swiftly gather any loose harpoons left in this block.  Briefly, you consider trying to retrieve the ones still lodged in your previous assailants’ bodies but dismiss that idea as too time consuming to be worthwhile.  You’ve got eight more to spare, and you’re relatively certain you can make them last between here and the next cache.  What you don’t have to spare is another second wasting time.    
  
There’s a hidden catch on your recuperacoon and when you depress it, the whole unit pops an inch or two free of the floor.  It slides easily on hidden tracks beneath it.  You can push it with one hand even when filled with slime, and moving it back reveals a porthole just wide enough to fit your shoulders through with an inch to spare on either side.  You swing your legs down into the opening and find the rebar rungs with your toes then begin to scale the shallow steps with easy confidence born from familiarity.  Just a foot below the opening, you grab for the handle on this side of the hatch and pull the ‘coop back into place, plunging the hole into darkness with a final click.

**====== >**


	2. Chapter 2

You’re not even sure what they want at this point.  If this was a normal break in, they would have been scrambling to grab and dash the second the first commotion broke out.  If this was a hit, they should be trying a lot harder to kill you.  You’ve had to detour twice now from them having already discovered and dismantled some of your weapon caches.  You make a mental note to hide these better in the future, maybe get a design for smaller vaults that you can stow directly in your crawl tunnels.  You don’t know why you didn’t think of this sooner. It was rather lazy of you to not plan better ahead.  
  
Still, you make steady progress toward the main vault, encountering little resistance besides having to digress when a tunnel would take you a little too close to a cluster of the invading trolls than you feel comfortable with.  The sheer number of them is more than a little disconcerting.  You’ve counted at least a dozen so far, all moving in pairs or small, loose groups and sweeping in what appears to be at least an attempt at an organized search.    
  
Aside from preemptively disarming your weapon supplies, they haven’t taken anything either, so they definitely aren’t after your valuables.  That leaves it to be you in specific they’re hunting for, and the implications have got you racking your brain, trying to comb through your list of enemies both confirmed and potential.  
  
The strangest thing about this whole mess you don’t quite notice right off the deck until you’ve had a chance to observe a number of them.  They’re all piss dribbling gutterbloods.  Not a fin to be glimpsed among them, not a well cut jaw or noble nose as would even befit a teal.  This has got you deeply troubled as you can’t recall anyone with this many lowblood ties as to be able to call in a relatively sizable force to raid your hive.  Accept possibly Vriska.  She could still be pulling the strings here, dancing a little army of mind slaves in a merry puppet show entitled “Let’s Annoy Eridan at an Ungodly Hour.”  
  
That doesn’t quite fit right either though.  You’d been under the impression that your parting was mutual and amicable, or as close as one cerulean troll could come to the definition of that term anyway.  This would be a grievous slight to you after all that.    
  
Unless, of course, this is all some sort of grand attempt to re-ignite your old black flame after a change of heart, in which case you’re flattered but not feeling entirely too hasty to go diving back into those particular waters of crazy.  You can’t get many more answers from scurrying through your tunnels like this, though.  A level down is the room with your main vault.  You need to arm up, secure and establish a perimeter and then see to ousting these swill blooded trespassers.  
  
You can move swiftly in the tubes, bypassing whole floor layouts that would otherwise take time to navigate from one egress to another, easily outpacing the trolls sweeping your hive.  The vertical one you’re in currently is a straight shot down to the basement floor where the ship rests, buried partway into the sand.  You keep most things of value down here locked into an intimidatingly large steel vault, including your prized laser rifle when it isn’t seeing active use.  You’re probably going to have to revise that policy in light of this evening’s events.  You’re going to have to revise a lot of things, actually.  You also keep bulk supplies down here.  Anything that might quickly break down in the salty sea air but must be kept in regular supply is stashed in a concrete bunker sunk into the sand, and everything else is stored in barrels and crates stacked against the walls.    
  
The exit of this tube is camouflaged expertly, if a bit predictably, as the side of a false crate in a stack of real ones.  One of the simulated plank gaps is in fact a spy hole and as you descend the last few feet, you crouch by it to take a quick survey of the room beyond.    
  
A snarl catches in your throat before it can escape and give you away.  Of _course_ you aren’t lucky enough for this room to have gone undetected.  It’s being guarded by at least four of your enemies that you can see from this vantage point. Each one is watching anything that looks like a possible entry or exit, including both the vault and storage bunker doors.  A third stands guard by the flight of stairs that constitute the actual main entry and the final one patrols a slow circuit around the room.  They’re nervous, shifting restlessly and regarding the shadows as if waiting for them to suddenly animate and attack.  It’s clear they’re in communication with the upper levels and quite well aware of their new missing seadweller problem.  
  
Well, you’d hate to disappoint them.  One harpoon is already loaded in the gun, awaiting its victim, and you lay another by your feet for easy access to reload quickly.  From where you are, you think you can bring down a troll each and clear a path to the vault before the others have figured out where the attacks are coming from but after that it will be a mad scramble for the door and hoping that you can get it unlocked and opened before you’re cut off.  You line up your shot carefully.  The angle is difficult, and you aren’t going to get a second chance.  
  
Just as the circling troll passes, you squeeze the trigger, letting the projectile fly with practiced ease.  It pierces him through the belly, kidney to kidney and he goes down screaming, curling over his punctured torso in a protective reaction that comes far too late.  You’re already slotting the next harpoon in place before he hits the sand.  His partners are moving too, but they aren’t quick enough to spot you yet, and you have the next target in your sights.  The next shot goes cleanly through the shoulder of the one standing guard beside the vault and pins her back against the wall.  She writhes and spits, shrieking curses but for all the noise she makes, she’s as good as out of the fight with the harpoon stuck fast.  
  
You’re discovered now, and the other two have leaped out of the way of any line for a direct shot.  Nothing left but to try your gambit for the vault.  The hatch of your hidey-hole clicks open and you dive across the sand floor of the room.  It didn’t take much to figure out what you were headed for, because the troll closest to you, the one that had been guarding the storage bunker, is moving to intercept.  Fuck, you can already tell he’s going to get there first and the strifekind he’s wielding is chains of all things.  He begins winding up, letting out a length of chain as he twirls it by his side and there’s no way you’re getting past his reach now.  
  
There’s a thump and a muffled whinny from the other hatch.  
  
Those tainted spawns of diseased filial pails, _that’s_ where they’ve been keeping him!  Forget the guns, they can wait.    
  
You check your speed, kicking up sand behind you as you cut to the side instead of following through on your intended route and throw yourself the last few feet to the door of your storage bunker.  The troll that moved to intercept you realizes his mistake and takes after you at a full charge, all theatrics with his weapon discarded, but you’re already kneeling beside the door and twisting the hatch wheel.  He collides with you an instant later, sending you both to the ground in a tangle, and the air is crushed out of your lungs as he pounds a chain wrapped fist into your side.  
  
But the door is unlocked and he’s plenty fucked.

 

 

 

The hatch explodes open, and your lusus come streaking out with a whinny so high and loud it’s nearly a whistle.  It spins, bucks and comes around on you both, letting loose another furious cry before whipping its tail into the troll that has you pinned, paused in mid lift of his fist for a second punch to gawp at his doom.  The blow knocks him sailing clear across the room and he crashes violently into a stack of storage crates that are promptly obliterated by the force.  He doesn’t rise from the wreckage.  He doesn’t even make a sound.  
  
The troll guarding the stairs has gone bugged-eyed and slack-jawed.  It takes her too long to recover from the shock.  She turns and begins pounding up the steps as fast as she can take them but your lusus has already noticed her, and he’s faster.  Just as her legs disappear up the stairwell, he darts in behind her.  You hear a crunch and a shrill wail before it’s cut off by a wetter snap and silence descends like a bird coming back to its roost.    
  
The seahorse comes drifting back down a moment later, his tail flicking in irritated little whips  and flinching curls while licking wet, brown gore from his muzzle.  He makes a beeline for you, chuffing and snuffling with worry the whole way. You push yourself up into a sitting position, wincing at the twinge of pain that’s accompanied by a grating sensation in one of your thoracic struts, and he knickers and snuffles, pushing his head against yours.    
  
“Yeah, I wwas wworried about you too, you dumb horse,” you soothe and pap him softly on the snout.  “Don’t go wwanderin’ off like that again, or I’ll skin ya for a neww sail.”    
  
You give him another reassuring pat and tug gently at his head fins before hooking your arm over his neck and using his solidness to pull yourself the rest of the way up with a pained grunt.  The broken bone is going to make things a slight more difficult but you’ve had worse, you’ll live.  Once you’re steady on your feet, you finally start to move back to the the vault but you’re stopped by a faint hiss.    
  
Oh that’s right, you hadn’t finished that one off yet.    
  
She’s pressed her self flat against the wall and has bared every fang at you that she can muster but is otherwise holding stock still, trying desperately to be spared the attention of your still fuming, snorting lusus.  You give her a once over then promptly dismiss her.  She can just be patient for her culling.  You press your code into the keypad of the vault door and listen for the telltale thu-thunk of the mechanism falling into place before swinging the door wide.  
  
Some of your most valuable plunders are here, winking up at you merrily in the dim light of the doorway.  Everything from anciently minted coins and flawlessly cut gems to obscure tomes and priceless works of art, too fragile and precious to leave out on display are hidden away to be kept safe and preserved.  You pass them by in favor of your greatest prize, sitting in its place of reverence alone on its rack against the far wall.  Ahab’s Crosshairs was once the weapon of choice of your very own ancestor.  To this day, recovering it from the watery wreck where it lay in wait for you for hundreds of sweeps and claiming it as your birthright remains one of your crowning achievements.  You lift it from the rack and you’re instantly comforted by its familiar weight in your hands.  
  
There’s other weapons in here too.  None are as impressive as the ancient laser rifle, but all well-used and well-loved in their time.  Settled amongst the various trinkets and valuables you’ve plundered are rifles of varying size and purpose and well stocked ammo boxes to match.  You have a mind that they’ll come in handy tonight as well and select a few other favorites from the collection.  
  
You still can’t use Ahab’s Crosshairs in the ship unless you want to bring down the whole hive around your fins in short order, so you sling it over your back by the shoulder strap and tuck one of your more traditional rifles under your arm instead.  There’s two more captchalogued into your specibus plus plenty of ammo for each, and you think you’re finally prepared to deal with this situation directly.  Stepping out of the vault, you close and seal it behind you then turn and prop your arm on the wall beside your captive’s head.  She shifts uncomfortably and looks away when you offer her your friendliest smile.  
  
“Noww then,” you drawl at her sweetly, “I’m more than a might irritated at the audacity of you an’ your friends invviting yourselvves into my home unannounced.  Touchin’ my things, upsettin’ my lusus, it’s dowwn right fuckin’ unmannerly behavvior.  Got anyfin to say for yourself?”  
  
She utters not a word, keeping her eyes downcast and her stance stiff.  Maybe this needs a different approach.  You slip the muzzle of your rifle under her chin and tilt her face- kind of pretty now that you’re looking at it, round and full with lowblood softness- up to you with the end of the gun.  
  
“Wwell wwhat sort of noble wwould I be if I couldn’t be a gracious host evven in the face of rudeness?  Not a fittin’ one, for sure.  I’m actually feelin’ rather generous tonight, so I’ll tell you what: you tell me what your compatriots are doin’ here an’ wwhich one I got to kill to get rid a’ them, and I’ll let you leave quietly wwithout so much as a grudge.”  
  
At first, nothing, but then her stoic mask slips in the slowest, most beautiful way, and she’s smiling up at you with the softest expression.  This is a much more promising attitude even if her eyes going vacant and wide like that is a little unsettling.  
  
“He has come with purest blood to cleanse.  The sea will be washed in red and the rivers of his rage, from it, will flow.”  
  
You blink.  “Wwhat.”  
  
She confronts you with a toothsome smile.  “The blood will cleanse, seadweller.”  
  
Fucking fantastic, you nabbed a crazy one.    
  
You sigh and lean away from the wall, swipe your hand over your face and she still beams at you, all guileless sincerity and insanity.  It’s clear at this point that the only thing you’re doing here is wasting time.    
  
Pulling the trigger would make too much noise— no telling how much got out of this block to the floors above to begin with—  so you take the barrel away, flip the gun stock first and bring it down against her temple with a solid crack.  
  
She slumps like a scrap textile wiggler’s toy as back-splatter paints the butt of your gun forest green.  Her expression never changes, still vague and unfocused, smiling faintly like you were just sharing amusing anecdote, and it makes you shiver.  It’s past time to leave this room before you get any further rattled.  
  
Clucking to your lusus to follow, you stomp across the sand and up the stairs without a backward glance.

**====== >**


End file.
